


Deadline Gemini

by quesarito



Category: South Park
Genre: Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quesarito/pseuds/quesarito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whole Foods may have flown into the horizon, but that didn't fix everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deadline Gemini

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thingy to help cope with the finale. It had its moments, but man, I really missed my sons just speaking to each other. The title is from a song that gets stuck in my head a lot, which I picked because I used both words in the fic. That's the whole reason.

Stan sort of thought he was imagining the soft knocks on his window, unused to hearing any knocks on his window anymore, and even then the ones he did remember had always been much more insistent. By the time the sound convinced him to shake the last of his sleep away and leave the pocket of warmth he’d built up under his blankets, Stan had braced himself to be (for being?) on the ass end of some awful prank to set off the first night of winter break. When, instead, he saw a bright green hat pressed against the glass, he thought a prank would have been kinder. 

When Kyle saw Stan at the window he leaned back and waited, and Stan tried to slide the window open without making too much noise. He doubted anyone would care and come running if they heard, but letting Kyle in this way always felt like a secret they needed to keep just between the two of them.

The air outside bit, the kind of cold that made Stan’s eyes feel like they were frosting over. Stan offered his arm to help Kyle in, and whispered when he said, “Jesus, dude, it’s like negative a billion degrees out here.” 

Kyle’s breath had left a cloud of fog on the window, but without a place to land it formed little puffs and drifted up, away, and then disappeared. He wore his coat over an old t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants that said “POOT!” all over them. No gloves, boots unlaced. Kyle hesitated, and set a troubled look on Stan’s arm like he hadn’t expected it to be so easy. Finally, he said, “Yeah, I’m fucking freezing,” and clamped his icy fingers over Stan’s elbow so he could climb in. 

Stan shut the window in a hurry to try and keep at least some heat in his room, while Kyle toed his boots off and stood, shivering, at the foot of the bed. 

“You can use the blankets, if you want.” 

It only took Kyle a second to think it over. He said, “Yeah,” and shrugged his coat off to crawl into the space Stan had just left. Stan sat on the edge of the bed while he got comfortable, and waited for Kyle to explain what the hell he was doing. It sucked that he had to question it, because in the past spending time together was just what they did, but with the way things had been Stan had a hard time believing Kyle would pay him a visit unless he absolutely needed to.

From the pillow, Kyle looked at Stan like he could feel how brittle things were, too, which is what made it so jarring when he cut straight to the bone and asked, “Are we still friends?”

Stan froze. “Dude, what?” 

Kyle rolled on to his back and spoke to the ceiling, suddenly more impassioned. “I know we say we’re best friends, or whatever, but lately we don’t—we haven’t.” He sighed, defeated, and asked, “Do you even still like me?” 

Stan thought that was taking it a little far. He had asked himself the same questions before, but hearing them from someone else made them tangible and dangerous. When faced with the real threat of not having a friendship with Kyle at all, Stan found he was viciously defensive of what they had left, and angry that Kyle had waited until it had gone this far in his mind to even say anything. 

He rolled his eyes and tried to sound extra confident when he said, “Yes, you dumbass,” and, when Kyle seemed unconvinced, continued, “You’re my favorite person to hang out with. You’re the first one I go to when shit goes down. You’re, like, snuggled up in my bed right now, dude. Of course I like you.” 

It was a performance, but it was true. Maybe not as true as it used to be, but if Kyle looked so stricken and Stan was so scared, then surely the solution was to go back to the way things were, not past it. 

Kyle stared at the ceiling some more, then twisted his mouth up and admitted, “Yeah. Me too.” 

Stan laughed, once. “Well, that’s good.” 

Kyle rolled his eyes, but he did it with a small smile. They looked at each other for a moment, shared the tiny bit of amusement between them, then Kyle wiggled over and held the blanket up. “Get in here, dude.” 

Stan grinned. Getting into bed together was definitely better than fighting on the cafeteria floor, and worlds better than being on opposite ends of the town and never speaking. He slid in to take up half of the space, and Kyle smiled wider across the mattress as they rearranged the blanket to suit them both. Kyle smelled like the cold and carried it in on his clothes, but it was warm enough under the blankets, and he wouldn’t have cared if it wasn’t, anyway.

Once settled, Kyle faced him. “How are we going to fix this?”

Stan didn’t know, and didn’t know how to respond, either. It was already nice, laying next to him, not arguing over anything, just the two of them. He didn’t want to argue. He said, “Dude, we’re fine. We fight sometimes but it’s never permanent, you know.”

Kyle leaned up on an elbow. “But we didn’t even talk about it. We always talk about it,” he said, voice getting smaller with every word. 

“Kyle, that wasn’t even the first time I pointed a gun at you.”

“Oh, yeah, that makes it better. Great, thanks.” Kyle collapsed back onto the pillow, but only rested a minute before he rolled to face Stan again. “But I had a gun too, didn’t I? And I was helping Leslie. So it’s my fault too.”

Stan scooted closer. “I didn’t even want to hurt you. It’s just, my whole family, we all whipped guns out over dinner and it’s like—we could finally talk about the stuff that mattered, I guess? We worked through a lot of shit and it was, good, and I thought maybe it’d work the same if I tried it with you.” 

That softened Kyle up a bit, as if he hadn’t considered that Stan wasn’t trying to kill him. “It kind of did work, I guess. For the whole town, even. But for us, I just, you weren’t on my side, dude! You didn’t trust me, the whole time!” 

Stan said, gently, “Well, you were working with the ads.” He was really trying not to let this escalate, but Kyle was right, they needed to get it out. 

Kyle leaned back. “I didn’t know that! I didn’t know she was an ad, I thought PC Principal had her locked up somewhere and she needed help.” He put a hand on his chest. “I was trying to help.” 

Stan sighed. “Well, you didn’t trust me, either, and you kept ragging on my dad. I know he’s an idiot, but come on, dude.” 

Kyle deflated, and put his face in his hand. “I’m just upset that we couldn’t even work together enough to end up on the same side of a gunfight,” he said. “That’s not us, we should—we’re better than that, Stan.” 

Kyle was right, they were better than that. All the years of friendship under their belts and they still fucked it up. But they were only ten, right? There was time to learn.

Kyle continued, “Well, I don’t know, dude. Maybe we aren’t better. But you’re just easy to fight with because—”

“You know I can take it,” Stan interrupted. “And I know you need someone—”

“To push back.” Kyle grinned big at this, and so did Stan. They really were a great team, even if they messed it up a lot.

Kyle moved in closer, and spoke quiter. “You’re so, I don’t know, I feel like you really think about shit before you go all in, I guess. I just get pissed off and that’s my whole argument.” Stan laughed because, yeah, that was true. Kyle continued, unbothered, “When you have a different opinion than me, I’m like damn, I really messed up, because of course Stan is right and I’m just being an idiot. But I don’t like being wrong, so I just keep going, you know?”

Stan nodded against the pillow, because yeah, he knew. “This can all be solved if we just talk to each other and listen to each other, right? Then we can be on the same team at the next gunfight.”

Kyle bumped his forehead against Stan’s. “See! You’re such a freakin’, I don’t know, a freakin’ peacekeeper. Even with me and Cartman you’re always like stepping in and trying to keep things civil until someone fucks it up.” 

Stan preened. “Yeah, it’s ‘cause I’m a Libra.” 

“Oh,” Kyle said. “I don’t know what that means. What am I?”

Stan had looked up everyone’s signs with Kenny one afternoon, and probably would’ve guessed Kyle's just by reading the profile. “You’re a Gemini.”

Kyle looked like he was rolling that around in his head to see how it fit, and it seemed to agree with him. “That’s cool. I still don’t know what it means, though, I don’t know much about astrology.”

“It’s pretty cool. I show you later.” 

Stan was getting tired again in the darkness of his room, with Kyle so close and warm. He felt calm, something he’d been missing for a long time, he realized, and he wanted to drift to sleep on the feeling. 

Kyle, though, had more to say. 

“Right before I came over, I was up reading and I—just, this guy said he’d never had friendships as good as the ones he had as a kid, and it made me feel like there’s this clock ticking down and if we don’t have our shit together by the time it runs out we’ll never be good. We won’t be super best friends forever, we’ll just be. I don’t know. Normal buddies. And we won’t be able to fix it after that.” Kyle toed Stan’s shin. “What do you think?”

Stan yawned, and tried to keep his breath out of Kyle’s face as he did so. “I love you, dude. Even if we’re just normal buddies in the future, you’ll still be the best normal buddy I have.”

“Do you still love me even when you’re pissed off at me?”

Stan snorted. “Apparently. I’m just like, well, Kyle’s being an asshole right now, but at least he’s my asshole.” Kyle laughed, softly. Stan let his head droop down the pillow so it almost rested against Kyle’s chest, but not quite.

Kyle said, “Me too, I think. When we’re fighting I’m just like, ok, when will this be over so I can hang out with Stan again.” He tilted his face so his breaths landed in Stan’s hair, and Stan thought it was pretty gay to think so, but it felt nice. His eyes were slipping shut, and he focused on Kyle’s breathing while it was there, and while it was close. 

Kyle only rested a moment before he stirred. “Shit, I have to go home. My mom would kill me if she knew I snuck out.” He sounded as tired as Stan felt, and he felt sorry that Kyle had to walk all the way back home in the snow. But he was right. Sheila really would kill Kyle, and Stan would be super bored all winter break. 

Kyle sat up and detangled from the blankets, letting in a rush of cold air. He put his boots back on, then his coat, and Stan felt kind of rude staying in bed while he left, so he got up too. 

They faced each other at the window, and Kyle said, “Are Gemini and Libra, are they, like... do they get along? Astrologically?”

Stan scoffed. “Duh.” 

Kyle grinned wide at that, then ducked his head to the side like he hadn’t expected it, and didn’t want Stan to see. Stan stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Kyle’s shoulders, while Kyle went for Stan’s waist, as usual.

Stan spoke into Kyle’s shoulder while they hugged, and said, “We’re best friends, dude. Just, like, next time we mess up, remember that.” 

As they stepped away, Kyle said, “You’ll probably have to keep telling me,” but he was smirking when he said it. Stan would have to remind himself, too. There’s no way he’d want to forget and miss the deadline Kyle mentioned, and live life half as good as it could have been. 

Kyle turned to leave, but before he climbed out, Stan gave him another quick hug. He was glad to give him a little more warmth before he went back into the cold.


End file.
